Guest Author: Elizabeth Meyette

Elizabeth’s husband Richard took her awesome head shot!

This is guest author week, and I invited my friend and Brainstorming Buddy Elizabeth Meyette to come and share her upcoming novel with us. A few months ago I had the pleasure of reading Elizabeth’s ghost mystery The Cavanaugh House, and when I learned she was completing the sequel I wanted to know more! Elizabeth and her husband Richard have a great partnership – she writes the books, and he takes the pictures for her covers. Rich also quite handy at digital art and takes care of lots of other details so that Elizabeth can keep writing! I’ll let Elizabeth tell you about the second in her series, soon to be released:

 

Buried Secrets Uncovered
By Elizabeth Meyette

A deserted house, a haunted winery, and a whisper from my muse. My latest novel, Buried Secrets, emerged from these three elements.

When Boris, my muse, whispered the following words to me: “This house held secrets…” I knew they were the beginning of a book. An eerie coincidence the next day—seeing the house I had visualized with those words—convinced me I was on the right track, and The Cavanaugh House was born. But my protagonist, Jesse Graham, wasn’t finished with mysteries yet. In my newest novel, Buried Secrets, she is caught up in another mystery that, once again, brings a troubled spirit into her life.

Our visit to Belhurst Castle was the inspiration for Buried Secrets. This castle, perched on a hill beside Seneca Lake in New York State, has a history fertile for inspiring books. First, the ghost of an early inhabitant, Isabella Bucke, an opera star at London’s Royal Opera House, haunts Belhurst Castle. Second, Isabella met an untimely death fleeing pursuers who were angry after her husband stole money from the opera house in Covent Garden—the reason for their escape to America. Third, the second floor of Belhurst Castle was a speakeasy during Prohibition. Who could resist writing about this place?

The sommelier we met during our wine tasting told us about Isabella’s haunting. One version of her death says she was crushed in a tunnel beneath the castle. Anticipating a need to flee someday, her husband had rigged a system to collapse the tunnel behind them after he and Isabella had reached the end of the tunnel, thereby trapping pursuers. Thinking she had passed him out of the tunnel, he pulled the lever accidentally killing her. Now her ghost wanders the grounds looking out at the lake. Sightings of her have been documented by many guests who stay at the bed and breakfast located in the castle.

So Buried Secrets is set at St. Bartholomew Academy for Girls and Wyndham Manor, both fashioned after Belhurst Castle and overlooking Seneca Lake. While the ghost in Buried Secrets is nothing like Isabella, I did borrow the idea of tunnels beneath the school, and did have one collapse, trapping…well, I don’t want to give the story away.

Buried Secrets is now available for pre-order at Amazon.

Buried Secrets Blurb:
When Jesse Graham almost runs over a “body” in the road one night, she is plunged into a labyrinth of secrets, lies and murder. All Jesse wants is a simple life teaching at St. Bart’s… and a chance at love with Joe Riley. She realizes that plan has been thwarted when puzzling occurrences at St. Bartholomew Academy for Girls get increasingly dangerous. The danger doesn’t just spring from the ghost who haunts the grounds of St. Bart’s, but from a sinister presence that is not ghostly at all. As she digs into the mystery, threats on her life and the life of her student escalate.

Which danger threatens her life the most? The ghost haunting her student or the secrets buried in the school?

About the Author
Author, blogger and believer in dreams-come-true, Elizabeth Meyette fell in love with books as a child when her sister read her Goldilocks and the Three Bears. “She had me at ‘Once upon a time…'” Elizabeth admits. A native of upstate New York, Elizabeth now lives in Michigan with her husband Richard. She retired early from teaching to pursue her passion: writing. “Yes, I hear voices in my head and I give them names and call them characters.”

Visit Elizabeth at her website and blog, and on Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, Pinterest, and Linked In.